


Cartograph

by linguamortua



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: F/F, Femslash, Past Violence, Reunions, Secrets, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-14
Updated: 2018-01-14
Packaged: 2019-03-04 22:53:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13374783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linguamortua/pseuds/linguamortua
Summary: Furiosa's dreams were always the same. Her in a war rig, or on a motorcycle, or on foot, barefoot, crawling, and him always inexorably gaining on her.‘He frightens me,’ she said, the taste of bile in her mouth. ‘He has marked my body and my soul.’





	Cartograph

**Author's Note:**

  * For [maharetr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/maharetr/gifts).



> Hi, Chocolate Box recipient! I've wanted to write this pairing for the longest time but didn't know how. Your letter shook something loose. I hope you enjoy it!

The oil in the lamp is almost spent and it is a cold night, very cold. Cold and quiet. Furiosa’s ears are not attuned to the dead, flat silence of a night in the desert. After the constant roar of the War Rig, and the constant shrieking and bickering in the Citadel, and the great, crushing chains and machines hammering and clanking and screeching: silence. Next to her, Valkyrie is breathing. Furiosa focuses on that sound. They are so close, pressed together for warmth, that she can feel the lift of the woman’s chest against her arm.

By now the others are asleep. The rustle of blankets and the murmur of voices have died away. The road warrior, the man, is patrolling. Furiosa recognises and respects the impulse. Still, she waits until his footsteps pass off into the middle distance before she whispers into the last flickers of light:

‘You’re awake.’

‘Yes.’ Pause. ‘I’m thinking about tomorrow.’

‘The salt flats?’

‘Yes. Perhaps. Everything. To move again is inconceivable. But if we stay—’

‘We die,’ Furiosa finishes for her.

‘Everybody dies.’ Valkyrie’s voice sounds very steady. Furiosa can remember when they were girls, and she, Furiosa, was the brave one, while little Valkyrie tagged along behind. Valkyrie, whose name was so much larger than her tiny form. Who has grown into the name. ‘If we have to die on a gamble, very well. The desert is no longer an option.’

‘Do you remember the fig tree?’ Furiosa asks suddenly. 

‘Jumping down into the pond. Yes. I was too scared to do it.’

‘You were smart. I broke my arm.’ To her horror, Furiosa’s voice audibly hitches. Her left arm.

‘I told you the water was too shallow.’

‘The salt flats—the fig tree,’ Furiosa whispers. ‘It’s harder to jump this time.’

Under their nest of blankets, Valkyrie fumbles for her hand and catches it. They lie clutching each other’s fingers like girls again. Valkyrie inhales a little once, twice, about to say something. She rushes it out.

‘How did it happen, Furiosa?’

Furiosa’s stump twinges angrily. Her palm, pressed against Valkyrie’s, starts to sweat. It was so long ago that it shouldn’t matter to her. She lived. The infection swarmed over her but briefly, and then receded. She did not die rotting like the war boys. She swallows.

‘Piece of sheet metal flew off a big rig. I had my war rig up against him. Tried to run him off the road. Sheared my hand right off.’

‘They made you fight?’

‘Breed or fight or die.’ Worse than the arm, for the Vuvalini, was Immortan Joe’s ownership. The deepest indignity, a man’s yoke. To fight for someone else’s cause was shameful; to do so because a man had required it, unspeakable. Furiosa can feel the indignity seared into her heart. And into the back of her neck. When there is daylight and they have the leisure, she will tell Valkyrie to take her knife and skin the Immortan’s mark off her body.

‘Furiosa,’ Valkyrie says, fiercely tearful, and pulls Furiosa into her arms. The warm, healthy life of her, her beating heart, are like home to Furiosa. She buries her face in Valkyrie’s neck. In the dim light, a very straight white scar is visible along Valkyrie’s collarbone.

‘And you?’ Furiosa asks, touching it.

‘A bullet. A raider.’

‘You killed him?’

‘I did.’

‘I’m going to kill the Immortan,’ says Furiosa.

‘We’re going away.’

‘He’ll follow. He won’t accept theft.’

‘You can’t steal a person.’

‘He doesn’t know that.’ Furiosa spreads her fingers out into the curve of Valkyrie’s lower back. ‘There’s more,’ she says, pushing the words out. The road warrior’s footsteps pass by again in a steady crunch and she falls silent. He leaves. She breathes. ‘Lashes,’ she said. ‘On my back. A bullet in my hip. Still there.’ One of Valkyrie’s hands moves to the place between her shoulder blades, exploring, and then down to the hard divot of scar tissue on her hip. ‘A map of everywhere he’s been.’

‘He can’t follow you across the salt flats.’

‘He can.’

Furiosa’s weakness nauseated her; she had never spoken her deepest fear aloud. She had never had anyone to speak to. Tomorrow, the salt flats and freedom. Or a pathetic, dehydrated death, a waterless skeleton huddled by a motorcycle. Those were the choices. In neither of those narratives could the Immortan figure. After all, his war boys carried only enough water to survive the journey to and from a sortie. And yet. And yet. Her dreams were always the same. Her in a war rig, or on a motorcycle, or on foot, barefoot, crawling, and him always inexorably gaining on her.

‘He frightens me,’ she said, the taste of bile in her mouth. ‘He has marked my body and my soul.’

‘Remember Concannon and Pilar?’ 

Furiosa did. Two proud and vibrant women, bonded to each other for life. Their marking ceremony had been long before she was born, but the pair renewed the scars each year. Little girls liked to copy the bloody ritual in their own small way. Valkyrie leaned away for a moment to her pack. She brought a small knife between them.

‘Yes,’ Furiosa said. The sense memory rushed back to her. How she and Valkyrie had secretly pricked their thumbs, just like the two women who, in time, became their respective initiate mothers. Valkyrie pressed the point into her own thumb with an audible little pop. Furiosa held hers out, and Valkyrie pricked her thumb too. They pressed them together. The tiny circles of blood on their skin were hardly visible in the dim light. ‘I want to do it properly, when we can.’

‘When we can,’ agreed Valkyrie. It was like they had never been parted. The older women had agreed that the two had a long history ahead of them; just like KT, just like Pilar. The two girls had been proud, each in their own way. They had heritage. They would be Mothers.

‘Nearly twenty years late,’ Furiosa said bitterly. ‘I thought I would come of age properly. I was never bathed in the pool. I never tasted the acacia tea from Concannon’s hand.’

‘It was destiny that you’d come back to me, though.’

The fear returned for a sick moment. ‘If he comes back—’

‘He will have to go through me, sister. He will have to go through every one of us.’

Once, Furiosa would have been reassuring Valkyrie. Her friend had grown, towering, strong. The tiny lampflame gave a final twitch and guttered out, but the night was a little less dark. Valkyrie held her tightly and Furiosa found no shame in herself as she let herself be held.

‘Being away from you was a kind of hell,’ she said, finally.

‘You read too many of the epic poems as a child, Furiosa,’ Valkyrie said with infinite affection, infinite love in her voice. She kissed Furiosa on the forehead, and on each cheek, and then on her mouth. ‘Go to sleep.’

And it was that easy. She slept.


End file.
